Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for coming all this way with Stoic :) THE BANNER SAGA IS NOW LIVE
Here's the launch trailer
Happy gaming! Backers can email community@stoicstudio.com if they need help getting their keys. Thank you again everyone!

The Banner Saga: Factions is now Open to All!

Hello! All of us at Stoic are proud to announce that The Banner Saga: Factions is now open to the public! We'd be happy to send more keys but no need, the game is free on Steam (PC and Mac). We're in the featured section of Steam, or just search for "The Banner Saga".

In addition, we've just finished our launch trailer (very proud of this one), available here:

First official tournament will be coming this Wednesday!

Some people have had questions about what "Factions" is, and why we released it separate from the single player Saga. To summarize, we built combat for the single player game and decided to release it as multiplayer competitive game free and early as we continue to develop the single player game. Unlike many "free to play" games, there's no energy system, no pay to win, and matches are made between teams with even power, regardless of whether they spent money or not. In fact, we've pretty much designed a game that you never need to pay a cent for, truly and honestly. We've probably screwed ourselves. In the meantime, work continues heavily on the single player campaign.

I love how the launch trailer and the intro to the tutorial describe the same event from two different perspectives. We aren't even in the single-player game and you're already showing off how multiple groups are fighting over the same issues. I look forward to play more of the solo missions (in future updates) and discovering more of the narrative of Factions.

I'm with Quartex; seeing the opposite perspective from the intro video is quite beautiful--even though I did have to watch the video twice just to parse the accent. (Subtitles, in this game, will definitely be useful.)

I also love the Horn tie-in, and the fact that even now, the game doesn't need to spell everything out for us.

Can backers get items from the in-game shop at a discount? Also, this is the results of the backers supporting Stoic very early on, I was hoping for something given for free on the multi player side since, you know, I backed it for the single player content that is going to be a year later than promised.

Discount sales on items are done regularly (daily/weekly). The devs will have to be the one to answer your second question, but the kickstarter backers got a week headstart on the launch of the game, ahead of the public. Carrying over progression and renown.

I was wondering about backer discount on items or a backer-only item pack for free, not just overall sales everyone can take advantage of.

I do not care for a 1 week head start.

I backed this game 10 months ago, already gave money to Stoic hoping for a SP game. Instead I get a MP game that has an in-game shop. Feels like the money the backers spent financing this on Kickstarter was not enough and now they had to find another way to monetize the game and keep going. Was hoping for at least some freebie on the in-game shop to show some goodwill towards the people who helped them get their feet off the ground and now have to wait for a year long delay to get what we paid for (the SP game).

But the delay didn't happen because they didn't raise enough money. It happened because they raised so much more, which in turn raised the ambitions and expectations for the final product, making it take longer to pull off. This is a very common occurrence in Kickstarter projects that reach their stretch goals, you'll find.

I was wondering about backer discount on items or a backer-only item pack for free, not just overall sales everyone can take advantage of.

I do not care for a 1 week head start.

I backed this game 10 months ago, already gave money to Stoic hoping for a SP game. Instead I get a MP game that has an in-game shop. Feels like the money the backers spent financing this on Kickstarter was not enough and now they had to find another way to monetize the game and keep going. Was hoping for at least some freebie on the in-game shop to show some goodwill towards the people who helped them get their feet off the ground and now have to wait for a year long delay to get what we paid for (the SP game).

They said in the kickstarter right from day one that the multiplayer would be launching first, before the singleplayer, this was always the case. The multiplayer release got pushed back about 4 months I believe, which also pushed back chapter 1 of the saga.

Delays happen, especially in the game industry, at least it was for the best reason: to make the end product better. Having been in the beta for factions the past 5-6 months I can tell you right now that the combat for the single-player game will be much much tighter than it would have been had they rushed.

They did have backer-only discounts btw for that first week of early access, since only backers could access the game at that time.

The devs have said in the KS update Factions will not be ported at this time to Linux. With such a small team, they cannot be distracting/devoting time, money, and energy, into porting Factions, before releasing the Single Player Saga, which WILL BE ported to Linux.

Hi Quixle. Very sorry for the recent troubles everyone has been experiencing with the servers. Stoic is doing it's best to get things worked out and stable. They are very very happy with the incredible amount of interest in the game, evidenced by the many players that hopped in for the public launch, and the speed with which people hop back on the servers when they're brought back on.

Though, as you may be able to tell, it wasn't quite expected they'd get these numbers within 3 days! It's been pretty crazy on their side...quite literally resuscitating servers left and right.

Long story short, the launch has made stoic quite happy, and they're doing all possible so that players can play the game. Please bear with us.